You can picture the scene in the newsroom: plucky new person in the SEO department thinks they’ve discovered the meaning of life… ‘EVERYONE IS GOOGLING TRACK CYCLING, DROP EVERYTHING!!’… A senior editor who only joined after the previous Olympics and is looking to throw their weight around a bit absolutely bollocks all the junior staffers, and demands they get on it right away. None of them have any knowledge at all of the sport or why they’re being asked to do it. Tired old reporters who have been around a while groan and know it’ll amount to f*** all. It doesn’t, as they predicted, and the shouty editor and SEO department pretend it never happened and go back to who’s sleeping with who in the Olympic Village.
Okay, maybe we’re being a bit dramatic, but the week of the Olympic track cycling means one thing — every tabloid website and their dog are suddenly interested in pumping out ‘search engine optimised’ cycling stories, all in search of your sweet sweet clicks. Here are the 13* types of track cycling stories you’ll be seeing pop up on your newsfeed this week…
Where are the 2012 GB medal winners now?
Sorry, when we said ‘track cycling’ all we really meant was Wiggo, Laura Trott (wait, is that still her name?) and Sir Chris Hoy. Maybe Victoria Pendleton, maybe Jason Kenny… YES, that’s her surname! Find out what they’re all up to these days, chuck all their names in a headline and bosh, you’ve got yourself a classic Olympic feature ready to be ignored by tabloid readers across the country.
What the bleep is going on? Your (very brief, and possibly inaccurate) guide to rules
We can almost hear our fictional editor’s cry: ‘I don’t give a damn if you’ve never watched the Omnium before, get out there and write me 400 words and an SEO-friendly headline. NOW!’
You know what? These are probably actually quite useful to someone somewhere, but will soon be replaced by handy guides to speed climbing and kayak cross. The Olympics isn’t what it used to be…
Why’s there a motorbike on the track?
It doesn’t get more ‘national media titles HAVE to get involved in track cycling at the Olympics’ than this. Could call it a derny but opts for motorbike in the headline because… well, clicks…
The super-local news angle…
This is one we can fully get behind, it’s just great local journalism. Find you angle, make it relevant to your readers. No complaints from us. Morpeth’s Hamish Turnbull? Carmarthen’s Emma Finucane? Brilliant. A genre perfected by the Buchan Observer going viral in 2016 for reporting ‘Aberdeenshire business owner wins presidential election’…
10 facts about rider X
When in doubt just pick a big name, go on Wikipedia, copy and paste 10 facts of questionable interest. Job’s a good ‘un. Ideally, for maximum effect, you want facts that anyone with even the vaguest interest in the sport already knows, making the 20-second reading experience completely and utterly pointless. Did you know that Mark Cavendish is from the Isle of Man and his nickname is ‘The Manx Missile’? Oh, right, you did…
Who’s the BBC commentator?
A favourite of many a title during any sporting event. Apparently people want to know who that person or voice is. No, we’re not sure either, but you’ll see plenty of interest in who does what at the BBC and Eurosport this week.
Random headlines listing how much kit costs
Flash kit that costs more than a car? £500 socks? £2,000 3D printed seat posts? Yeah, get all that in the headline… oh, wheel of fortune pun… perfect.
Who is rider X (inevitably British female cyclist) dating?
Not as commonly seen as it used to be, but we’ve still spotted one publication celebrating Britain’s women’s track team gold by… going “inside Olympic cyclist Emma Finucane’s relationship with famous boyfriend”… no, really…
ROYALS IN THE CROWD
The bat-signal to tabloid journalists, the obsession with where certain humans go and what they do doesn’t end just because they’ve stepped into a velodrome. It literally doesn’t matter who… if they’re royal get it mentioned… even if they’re the Duchess of Edinburgh… get the pic, bash together something about them ‘roaring GB’s heroes on’, mention the price of the dress and hit publish.
Betting tips
If there’s sport being played, there’s some website somewhere wanting to tell you who to bet on. Do they know who Ethan Hayter is? No. Is that going to stop them? No.
Why loads of world records are going
One of the more high-quality SEO stories that does the rounds when the records start tumbling. Presumably written by the same person who got wheeled out to write about why hardly any records were being set in the pool last week. If nothing else it’s a good excuse to mention that the bike cost more than a car again.
What’s on when and how to watch it
Well this is awkward…
There you go, you’re now an expert and could walk into any newsroom up and down the country and pitch a track cycling-related story. Let us know if there are any we’ve missed and who knows, it might just appear on road.cc sooner than you think…
* We actually only had time to think of 12 things before heading to the pub, but in keeping with good SEO practice for fluff listicle articles we had to keep it to an odd number of course…
-1024x680.jpg "“Clear anti-cyclist bias”: Lawsuit filed against Toronto police after cop doored cyclist… before ticketing rider over incident")
7 thoughts on “13 things you didn’t know about track cycling SEO articles during the Olympics”
I had to Google what SEO
I had to Google what SEO means…
…Search Engine Optimisation, ironically
Talking of the super local
Talking of the super local news angle, my kids go to Tom Dean’s (the gold winning swimmer) old school. School’s twitter feed seems to be pumping out a Tom Dean item every 5 minutes…
Trying to work out the amount
Trying to work out the amount of self awareness in producing this SEO targetting article about SEO targetting articles from a website that seems to do a lot of SEO targeted articles. Certainly a high level of irony.
We are well aware that we are
We are well aware that we are guilty of pumping out SEO-led articles, and of the multiple levels of irony. If we weren’t that would be even more ironic, which is a bit of a shame.
road.cc wrote:
“
Tour de FranceOlympics bikes vs the bikes you can buy in the shops — are they actually the same?”“Would
PogacarTom Pidcock win theTour de FranceOlympic mountain biking on a cheaper bike?““What happens when
a Tour de Francean Olympic rider punctures?““How do
Tour de FranceOlympic cyclists pee on the bike?”Apocryphal story about the
Apocryphal story about the Aberdeen press & journal newspaper looking for the local news angle in the titanic disaster: “Aberdeen man drowns”.
For effective SEO it needs at
For effective SEO it needs at least one cat photo.